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List of contents
1 Synthesizing and deconstructing: Classic works, dissenting voices, and resurgent times in PR history 2 Historiography and the contestation of the past 3 Forging and reforging: Fashioned history, diversification, and methods 4 French innovation (1): Lucien Febvre, Marcel Bloch, and the origins of Annales 5 French innovation (2): The later Annales, "New History," and the Longue Durée 6 Is PR history best seen in the context of a media age, a digital era, or liquid times? 7 Enlarging times: Big history, eco-history, and world history 8 After postcolonialism: Deprovincializing history and PR history 9 True stories: Fiction, postmodernism, and hidden historical narratives 10 Reclaiming futures: Plural approaches, deterritorialization, and other ways forward.
About the author
David McKie is Professor in the Department of Management Communication at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. He has published or co-published four books (including the 2007 NCA prize winner Reconfiguring Public Relations), 22 book chapters, and 55 refereed journal articles. As CEO of RAM International Consulting, David works in leadership and strategic communication in Asia, Europe, and the United States.
Jordi Xifra is Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) in which he is the director of the Master of Science in Strategic Communication and Public Relations. He has published more than 15 books on public relations and public affairs in Spain and South America, and his articles have been accepted for publication in Public Relations Review, Journal of Public Relations Research, and American Behavioral Scientist, between others. He founded AIRRPP, the Spanish Public Relations Research Association, and he is the coeditor of Public Relations Inquiry (Sage).
Summary
Although PR scholarship has significantly extended its methodological, reflective and theoretical range, the accompanying resurgence in PR history scholarship still lags behind. This book aims to take apart existing PR history and reconstruct ways of doing it better - to widen the scope of PR by freeing its pasts, presents and futures from the effects of narrow, ideologically driven histories and methods of historiography.
An explicitly revisionist project, this book sets out to use discourses around history to deliberately influence the present and future. It accepts that the past is irretrievable and advocates more openly self-critical, and more diverse PR history writing, vital to generating both valid PR histories and viable PR futures. In the process, it calls into question assumptions of authority embedded in existing PR history research.
Contesting PR’s pasts to reclaim its futures, this challenging text deconstructs the range of existing PR history and reworks it to align with contemporary transnational challenges and social movements. In doing so, it updates PR history and augments PR theory for the next stage in their development. It will arouse debate for all scholars, educatorsand students of PR, Communication studies and cultural history.
